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The house keys jangled in Bethany Howard’s hands as she unlocked her front door.
To say the day had been a shitty one was the same as calling Mount Everest a molehill. To be more precise, the past three days had been nothing but terror, adrenaline, and coffee with snatches of catnaps caught in full tactical gear, but today had been the worst. She was running on fumes. Goddamn fucking SHIELD.
The FBI agent stepped into her darkened apartment and locked the deadbolt and chain behind her. In one smooth gesture, she drew her service weapon as she turned and aimed at center mass. She might be running on fumes, but she wasn’t a blind idiot.
By the kitchen sink, her coffee cup shone in the soft moonlight as it hung on the drying rack. The problem was, Bethany had left all her curtains closed when she ran out of her apartment three days ago. She had also abandoned her half-drunk cup of coffee on the granite counter.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she demanded, her hands rock steady despite the adrenaline roaring in her veins.
Jasper Sitwell, goddamn agent of the fucking organization that Washington D.C. and a good portion of the world had spent the past 72 hours cursing up and down the entire North American continent, smiled blandly at her hostility. “It’s nice to see you too, Agent Howard.”
“Don’t,” she warned. “I am not in the mood for any of your fuckery. Keep your hands where I can see them and no sudden moves, or I swear to God, I will shoot you.”
“I’m not here to threaten you,” he said calmly, “and I’m not here to hurt you either. I would, however, appreciate it if you didn’t arrest me.”
“Do you have any idea of the shitshow you’re in right now?” Bethany was tired enough that she could hear her carefully contained temper slip loose of her control. “We have standing orders from the President himself to detain any and all SHIELD agents we encounter, lethal force authorized if necessary. So don’t make me shoot you because I will not miss.”
Sitwell stayed right where he was, hidden in the shadows of her kitchen, with perfect lines of sight to the entire apartment. For the first time, Bethany cursed herself for choosing her home with defensive positions in mind. She hadn’t been imaginative enough to think about what she would need if she was trying to roust an attacker out of her home.
She inhaled slowly, trying to calm her temper and think through the thick wall of her exhaustion. First, secure her location and her safety. Second, restrain and detain. Third,… There were three generations of Good Reasons why she needed to think long and hard before she called this in. If it was anyone else, any other SHIELD agent, she probably wouldn’t even think twice about pulling the trigger, but… but it wasn’t. Fuck.
“Are you alone?” she asked, keeping her back to the wall. The rest of the curtains were still drawn, so there was that blessing. Even if he was lying to her, at least Bethany could move “death by sniper” lower on her list of “ways to possibly die tonight.” Still, she kept herself in the narrow blind spot between the kitchen and living room windows.
“Yes.”
“Forgive me if I don’t take you at your word,” she said tightly, keeping him in her peripheral vision as she did a quick visual sweep of her apartment. The bedroom and bathroom were out of sight, down the hallway, but there was no way she was going to leave Sitwell unattended to check that they were, indeed alone.
“You know I’m not lying.”
“SHIELD agents lie as easily as they breathe,” she retorted, bringing her full attention back on him.
“You know I’m not lying,” he repeated in that same irritatingly calm tone. Oh, she knew he wasn’t lying to her, not at the moment, but she also knew that not lying was not the same as telling the truth. Most people assumed that they were the same, but she knew that there was a world of difference between the two and he was an expert at walking that line.
“We’re alone,” he said, “unless you have a team on standby.”
I’m not that fucking lucky. Bethany glared at him, keeping an eye and ear out for any unexpected company. If they weren’t as alone as they seemed, then the chances of her surviving tonight were nil. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do her job.
“Don’t fucking sass me,” she snapped. “Now answer the goddamn question: What the hell are you doing here?”
“I need your help.”
Sitwell sounded sincere, and she knew he was. That didn’t sway her to lower her weapon. He was a threat, in more ways than one, to her safety. Only an idiot with a death wish right now would be talking to any SHIELD agent without having said agent at gunpoint, preferably handcuffed and shackled to a steel chair bolted to the floor in an otherwise empty room.
“This is you, calling in your favor?” she said, letting the bitterness seep into her voice. It was less of a favor and more outright blackmail, but there were certain lies she told herself to stay sane.
“No,” he said quietly, resignation haunting his words, “this is me, asking for your help.”
“I told you,” she reminded him coldly. “I have no interest in helping SHIELD, especially after this week.”
“I’m not here as a SHIELD agent.”
“Then why are you here?” There was a tense silence.
“I need your help,” he repeated simply before he shifted from where he sat slumped against her kitchen cupboards. The slight movement was enough to jostle his suit jacket open. She inhaled sharply.
“You’re hurt.”
Even in the dim light, Bethany could see that his formerly pristine white shirt was dark with dried blood. Sitwell smiled wryly. “Yeah.”
“Why aren’t you at SHIELD or a hospital?” She fought the urge to turn the lights on, to get a better look so she could figure out if she needed to call an ambulance. “You know I’m not a doctor.”
“SHIELD is…I think the current situation speaks for itself. I’m off-grid.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said fervently before the implications hit her. “Fuck, you’re bringing SHIELD agents to my door?”
“No,” he replied. “They think I’m dead.”
…What? There was a pause before she asked reluctantly, “…Why?”
Sitwell replied blandly. “I may have been thrown out of, into the path of, and under a moving vehicle.”
Bethany stared at him, because for an injured man, he looked…pretty damn healthy for having been run over. Jesus Christ, this kind of mindfuck and general fuckery was exactly why she had told him to shove off six years ago when he had come knocking on her door the first time.
“Do I even want to know?” she muttered to herself rhetorically, thinking aloud before saying preemptively to him, “and if the answer includes anything that is even remotely close to “it’s classified,” don’t even bother.”
“I think we’re past ‘it’s classified,’” he remarked mildly.
“Oh really?” she said sarcastically. “Was it the disaster zone that is currently D.C., the collapse of a global agency, or the death toll that makes New York look like— ”
She cut herself off. There was no use in taking out her grief and terror on him; no use in trying to anchor her whirlwind emotions with a man whose own emotions were all over the place.
Lock it down, and back; the memory of her mentor’s voice was soothing, almost an instinctive response to her emotional overload. Bethany forced herself to take deep, slow breaths, swallowing down her fear and rage.
“So you faked your death,” she stated, her voice not entirely steady, “and now you’re in my kitchen, bleeding on my floor and asking for my help. Okay, you still haven’t answered my question: why?”
“I know I can trust you.”
“I can’t tell if you’re crazy or not,” she told him, because he definitely believed it and she couldn’t understand why or how. Maybe she was the safest choice, maybe she was his only choice, but she couldn’t really believe that he was willing to blindly put his life in her hands. Not when he knew that everything SHIELD had on her was false and that the only reason he wasn’t dead was because living SHIELD agents raised less questions that she couldn’t afford to have asked about her life or her family.
Bethany wasn’t special. She wasn’t gifted or talented in any way, shape, or form. She was just … incredibly sharp at telling – sensing – when someone else was lying to her. It wasn’t that she could read minds — there was no scientific proof that telepaths actually existed — but more, she could tell when someone felt guilt or shame or any other emotion. If humans could have otherworldly abilities, she might be labeled an empath, but even with the knowledge that there were actual not-from-this-Earth aliens out there, she was just an FBI agent assigned to the Art Crime Team. She wasn’t special.
Six years ago, Sitwell had let her sell that fiction to him, leaving her off the Index and below SHIELD’s radar. She knew she owed him for giving her a normal life that didn’t include constant paranoia.
“I’m SHIELD,” he said. “If I remember correctly, you’ve been calling us crazy bastards from the very beginning.”
“Don’t make me find a frying pan,” she warned him, repeating the same threat she had greeted him with every time they had met. “Also, I have a gun.”
“You’re Bureau, through and through,” he said and weakly held up a hand to preempt her retort. “What would you do if you found out that your A.D. was corrupt? And it wasn’t just him? What would you do if you found out that the system you've given your life to, can't be trusted?”
Bethany stared at him because what he was saying made enough sense that she knew she didn’t have the mental or emotional reserves to deal with what he was about to tell her. “Stop. I — I think you know what I would do.”
“If I help you,” she said, already knowing that she probably would, goddamnit, “what do you need?”
“Medical care and transport to a safe location,” he said quickly. “I can go from there.”
“Let me guess: out of D.C. and off SHIELD’s radar?”
Sitwell smiled tightly at her, without any of his usual smugness or snark. This was a man in pain, and she wasn’t very good at keeping herself from helping others.
“Goddamn it,” she sighed, because yes, she was going to do this, aid and abet a fugitive of the law because she was such a fucking easy mark. “I’m going to have to bleach the kitchen, aren’t I?”
“It’s linoleum,” he pointed out.
"I cook here!"
Sitwell seemed unperturbed by her annoyance as he replied pragmatically, "It's better than having bloodstains on your carpet."
“It’s not going to be suspicious at all for me to have a blood pool in my kitchen,” she observed sarcastically, as if she hadn’t heard him. The items she needed were in a lockbox in her bedroom closet. If there was someone waiting in ambush for her or if this was some elaborate trap, she was screwed as far as “not dying” went, but at some point, she had to trust him and trust herself.
Bethany shifted her weight and asked, “Can you move?”
“I prefer not to.”
“Fine,” she said and then sighed, “but if I end up dead, I’m going to come back as a ghost and make your life a living hell.”
“Deal,” he answered with a small smile.
Keeping him in her peripheral vision for as long as she could, she moved quickly down the hallway, clearing her bathroom and bedroom. As Sitwell had promised, there were no ambushes. It was just the two of them in her apartment.
When she slid open her closet door and no knife-wielding assassin stabbed her in the throat, Bethany let her guard drop for one relieved exhale. She kept her Glock in one hand while she opened her lockbox and retrieved the items she needed. She had to get him comfortable first before she assessed him and came up with a plan to move an injured man out of the city without causing suspicion.
What the hell are you doing? she asked herself on another sigh as she closed the lid and tucked the lockbox away. Before she shut her closet door, Bethany picked up her spare To-Go bag and grabbed a sweat jacket and an extra-large ‘Welcome to Disney World’ T-shirt from their hangers. There was nothing like bloodstained clothing to make people start wondering if they needed to call the cops.
On her way back to the kitchen, Bethany raised her service weapon again and dropped her duffle bag by the coffee table in the living room. Sitwell hadn’t moved from where she had left him. Without a word, she went to one knee and slid the capped syringe and alcohol swipe across the floor. He looked down at the items that came to rest against his hip, and then looked up at her with skepticism.
“I’m stupid enough to want to help you,” she told him, “but I’m not that stupid. So you decide, right now, whether or not you actually trust me to help you, or you’re just here because you’re out of options.”
He sighed heavily and tore open the small white packet. “I’m not entirely sure it’s legal for you to have a Schedule II substance in your apartment.”
She gave him an unimpressed look. “I’m sure you know exactly what I’ve been up to for the past ten years of my life, if not for my entire life. Or if you personally don’t, I’m sure there’s a file somewhere in that compromised system of yours that’s painted a target on the back of every single member of my family.”
“There’s not,” he said, pulling his shirt out of his pants. His breathing hitched momentarily before he continued. “I kept you off the Index. I marked you as a reject.”
“Maybe I trust you,” she told him, watching his hands shake as he slid the cap off the syringe, “but are you seriously asking me to trust the system right now? After everything you've said?”
His silence was enough of an answer as the morphine hit his system. Bethany waited until the tension leeched out of his shoulders and his head lolled back against the cabinet. It was only then that she lowered her service weapon.
“Are you still with me?” she asked, her voice gentle and soothing as she approached him.
Sitwell mumbled something before he said clearly, “Yeah. I’m here.”
“I’m going to take look at you now, and we’ll go from there, yeah? No snapping my neck just because I poked you a little too hard, okay?”
“Promise,” he slurred, because she might have given him enough of a dose to put him out. He was clearly with it enough to keep his breathing slow and steady, compensating for the painkiller’s side effects, but she could tell he was drifting on a soft wave of drugs and endorphins.
Bethany’s quick examination turned up injuries to his torso, left leg and lower back. He also had a nice bump on the back of his head, a wrenched shoulder, and spectacular bruising underneath his Kevlar vest. She shook her head when she was done.
The best thing to do would be to call her team, take him into custody, and get him to a hospital. She was not a doctor, but she had seen enough injuries in her career to know he needed help, and fast. Who knew how long he had been bleeding out on her kitchen floor, waiting for her to come home? The problem with that course of action was that it would put both of them on the radar, and people would start asking why a supposedly deceased SHIELD agent would go to an FBI agent for help. That is, if whoever tried to kill him didn’t come around a second time to finish the job. No, this had to be discreet and fast. Fuck.
“Agent Sitwell?” she asked, gently tapping his cheek. His eyes fluttered open and she tried to smile reassuringly at him. “I’m going to need to make a few phone calls, get you some help and get you out of here. It’s going to be okay.”
“Jasper,” he rasped, looking fragile in the dim light. “Not—”
“Okay,” she said simply. “Then you can call me Beth. Now just keep on breathing for me and rest for a bit.” She holstered her weapon and unclipped her cell phone from her belt.
Bethany sighed as she dialed a phone number from memory. This was going to put them all straight from the frying pan into the fire, but the world was a different place now, and she had a decision to make: keep her secrets and let somebody else die, or take a risk and pray the gamble would work out?
She made the call.
“Hey, it’s me; I’m okay. I…I need a favor.”
*